Home Depot's Hypnosis
I am constantly telling people at my Sales Summit that they are very nearly hypnotized by our media in the US. I then go through a few easy exercises to prove it to them. It isn't difficult to do.
How hypnotized? Well it depends on the level of immersion into a particular medium one goes. In this case, marketing, sales, and customer service. THAT is a deep hole here in the good ole' US of A.
For instance, in word association, customers (yours, not mine) are as likely to respond to the word "Plumber" with the word "pipe" as they are to respond to the word "faucet" with the words "Home Depot". I'm not kidding. The same is true for "Electrician" and "wire": The customers are as likely to respond to "chandelier" with the words "Home Depot".
What can this mean for us as a larger implication than "Home Depot's marketing works"?
Well, one possibility is the depth to which our customers have been re-trained in this generation: Trading Spaces, The HG network, and the apparent mother of all optimisms "You can do it..." What it means is that this generation doesn't even consider most of you a legitimate resource for "sexy" (please people, installations are never going to be sexy to the layman; something shiny!)things like tub spouts or decorative dimmers.
We have ways of causing you to buy...
The number of ways you have for making the customers aware that you carry these sorts of things matters to your bottom line. How many do you have? Can you do them all without appearing pushy?
How hypnotized? Well it depends on the level of immersion into a particular medium one goes. In this case, marketing, sales, and customer service. THAT is a deep hole here in the good ole' US of A.
For instance, in word association, customers (yours, not mine) are as likely to respond to the word "Plumber" with the word "pipe" as they are to respond to the word "faucet" with the words "Home Depot". I'm not kidding. The same is true for "Electrician" and "wire": The customers are as likely to respond to "chandelier" with the words "Home Depot".
What can this mean for us as a larger implication than "Home Depot's marketing works"?
Well, one possibility is the depth to which our customers have been re-trained in this generation: Trading Spaces, The HG network, and the apparent mother of all optimisms "You can do it..." What it means is that this generation doesn't even consider most of you a legitimate resource for "sexy" (please people, installations are never going to be sexy to the layman; something shiny!)things like tub spouts or decorative dimmers.
We have ways of causing you to buy...
The number of ways you have for making the customers aware that you carry these sorts of things matters to your bottom line. How many do you have? Can you do them all without appearing pushy?
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